Five Key Reasons to Journal

At the beginning of the year I decided that instead of quotes of what other people are saying around leadership, agility, and teamwork, Agility for All would share journal prompts and weekly wrap up tips. But how many of you journal? And do you understand the importance of journaling?

I asked my colleague, Dannie-Lu Carr of Flaming Leadership to put together her 5 key reasons on why journaling should be part of your daily routine. Here are her reasons which we will examine in this article.

• Track your progress and growth; celebrate your wins

• Reduce stress and anxiety and make sense of some things

• Improve your communication skills; help yourself find the right words for conversations

• Allow space to your stream of consciousness to sketch, imagine, dream and find inspiration

• Strengthen your memory

Track your progress and growth; celebrate your wins

How many of you have actually mapped out your path for professional growth. You know that here at Agility for All, we love a good canvas and we encourage you to start with a canvas. Young people can start doing them when they are in secondary school and then build on it and professionals can start with one like the below from SEP.

From this point you can journal about your goals and growth and of course celebrate the wins. I would encourage you to find something every day that you can celebrate. We all to often only celebrate big milestones or accomplishments and don’t take time to smell the roses and celebrate the small things that all contribute to our success.

Reduce stress and anxiety

If we let stress and anxiety creep to insurmountable levels we cannot function. We are not for a minute suggesting that journaling is a replacement for therapy or medication if warranted but making journaling a habit to get thoughts out of your head and onto paper is a technique we use in varying degrees in our programs. For example, an icebreaker that we do is to have people write things that are distracting them from the coaching session on pieces of paper, crumple them up, and throw them away.

We also employ a technique for determining your happiness map. First we identify triggers that consistently cause stress or anxiety. Then we create a list of things that can disrupt this cycle of thought and behavior to create happiness or calmness instead of stress and anxiety. And then we ask that each participant ensure that they have easy access to these disruptors. For example, if one of your ways to reduce stress is to go for a run, then having to look for your running shoes for 15 minutes is not going to help.

And finally we encourage just using a blank sheet of paper to empty your thoughts from your head. Sometimes just visualizing them in words or pictures can help change what is happening in your mind.

Improve your communication skills

Have you ever written down a difficult conversation that you need to have with someone to plan out what you want to say so that when that moment arrives you are prepared? Or written down bullets for a presentation to make sure your thoughts were clear? This is a form of journaling. And it is one we encourage you to use frequently. You can even take it a step further and practice the conversations with a neutral party to get feedback.

If you want to take this one step further, then take a look at Clean Language and how it might enhance this technique of practicing difficult conversations, changing how we ask questions, and turning the words that we used into powerful ones. This visual from Clean Learning shows some of the possibilities with clean language usage.

Writing your thoughts can help you both professionally and personally because you work on collecting your thoughts in a coherent, cohesive manner which allows you to have deeper meaningful conversations with those in your circles.

Allow space for your stream of consciousness

Some years ago I attended a conference and it was the first time that I saw someone doing visualization of the conference sessions. I was intrigued. I can’t draw. Well I used to be able to draw. I won art contests. But something in my brain changed and now basic drawing skills are a challenge. So for me, the idea of visualization would take a lot of practice. However, speaking several languages, words come easier to me. So for me, a journal or even a pad of paper next to the bed, allows me to dream when the ideas come to me. I have even been known to send myself an email from my phone because something came to me when I was walking around town doing my shopping.

But if you make an actual habit of journaling your ideas you will be amazed at what you find in your journal when you look back. I have had more than one “huh…I thought of that…interesting!” moments. And then I can go back to those thoughts on days when I am struggling to find my footing or feel inspired in my work or mission.

Strengthen your memory

Are you the person who says if you write things down you remember them? That’s me! I am much more likely to remember a concept or idea if I have written it down intentionally. I can’t say the same for my random sticky notes but in general if I write things down there is a better chance that it gets committed to memory.

But beyond that, journaling helps you to organize your thoughts which translates into other things. At university, we took notes to remember salient points from instructors to pass exams. In the work setting, we take notes in meetings to remember key ideas or action items. We even have notetakers to capture the meetings for those that couldn't attend or for accountability. But there is actually a scientific reason that journaling can help your memory. When you write by hand, your brain gets the message that this is focus time. Brain cells are actually stimulated for deeper learning and memory.

So at the end of the day, regardless of why you use journaling there are both physical and mental health reasons to do so but also it provides us with clarity in our professional and personal lives.

Want to read more about journaling? Check out these links:

Powerful Health Benefits of Journaling

18 Incredible Benefits of Journaling and How to Get Started

Want some journal prompts to get you started? Check out the Free Resources at Flaming Leadership and our Agility for All Free Resources

Join us for a group coaching program and put journaling into practice. We offer offsites, online group coaching, and corporate in-house programs.

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About the Author:

INDRA A. BOOKS

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